Death of a Necromancer
by tin
Summary: Very, very AU; none of the original Tokyo Babylon characters appear. I suppose this is more a fanfic of the concept Namely: psychotic onmyouji, bastard!gothic Tokyo, and lots of murders
1. Default Chapter

**Death of a Necromancer**

Draft: March 2003  
Note: While this story does not seem like fanfic -- because it's so wildly, dubiously AU -- it is fanfic, inasmuch as it is based on Tokyo Babylon, and in the writing of it. None of the original CLAMP characters appear though, except by allusion. 

Prologue.

"A long time ago, there existed a secret sect of hereditary stranglers who brought horror and death to the streets and shadows of India for three centuries. They killed with bare feet and fatal scarves. Hired assasination was, for them, a religious duty. They were devoted to the goddess whose idol is black, and whom they worshipped under the names of Durga, Parvati, and Kali Ma." 

Aludia tilted an empty hourglass up over her head, as if to the light of unlit candles on the chandelier that plunged down from the vaulted ceiling and swung on level with the big dormer windows. She studied the hourglass intently for a moment, then let it fall on the floor without so much as a sigh, where it shattered into tiny glass and exhumed sand. A slight wind blew in from the open windows. The air was heavy and slightly sour, an essence of perspiration, dust, excess sun, and coming rain, and the hothouse flowers that bloomed on the miniature patterned tables.

Hikaru slid a glance towards his companions. Ikuhara sat on a chair a few feet away from him, arms folded across his chest, feet crossed on the floor, eyes half-closed and sleepy. In contrast, Takehisa was leaning forward on the divan, staring at Aludia. He had never even blinked the past hour, thought Hikaru. His mouth hung open and he looked on the verge of passing out. Takehisa had one of those sweet cherubic faces that never seemed to grow old. Even while gaping at Aludia like a fish, his skin just as pale and sickly translucent, he was still beautiful and looked no older than sixteen, even though Hikaru knew he was nearly thirty. Pale skin, delicate bones, large dreamy eyes, slender hands clasped on his lap now, and trembling, clawing as if for air. 

Aludia sat directly front of Hikaru. They had entered the room to find her sitting on an old painter's stool. A large canvas was propped in front of her. She was holding an ink brush. Hikaru could not see what she was painting and he knew better than to ask. He could not see Aludia herself. Fine black silk edged with lace covered her head and draped her body like an exotic widow's shroud. 

Something stung Hikaru's eyes then. He blinked rapidly while he reached for a silk cloth inside his sleeve. Tears lingered on his eyelashes like knife-edged dew drops. 

"These adepts swore to be valiant, submissive, and secretive," said Aludia. "They spoke a language made up of signs and ciphers that could be understood anywhere. Their fraternity consisted of four orders: the Seducers, who lured travelers with songs and fantastic tales; the Executioners, who strangled them; the Hospitalers, who dug the graves; the Purifiers, who stripped the corpses." 

Hikaru wiped his eyes harder. When he looked at the cloth, he saw through his swimming vision that it was stained with little drops of blood. 

"Is that it?" he said. 

"You're bleeding," said Ikuhara, yawning. 

Takehisa started and turned towards Hikaru slowly, his thin perfectly shaped mouth now working, convulsing. "Are you all right, sir?" He blinked and shook his head and drew a heavy embossed revolver from the pocket of his crisp linen jacket. "Are you all right?"

Ikuhara shifted on his seat, mumbling irritably. He didn't look so sleepy anymore but he didn't look so interested either. He shot Hikaru a bored, disgusted glance.

Hikaru couldn't look at Aludia. His eyes were streaming too much, and the sun was on his face. He put up a hand to wipe them and smeared his fingers with blood. 

Takehisa had stood up. He was waving the revolver expansively and he was talking. Fast and low at first, as he had begun, then louder and louder until the air was rent by his shrill cries. Hikaru wondered if Ikuhara could be bothered to lunge for the gun because in the state he was in, he certainly couldn't.

Then Takehisa pointed the revolver at him. Hikaru froze. Ikuhara grunted. 

"I can't see," Hikaru muttered. "Ikuhara, do something, you bastard." 

Takehisa's fingers tightened on the trigger. Hikaru's own blood-stained hand worked frantically on the space in front of him. He heard Ikuhara say something that sounded like: "Damn kid." 

"He's thirty, for god's sake," he snapped. 

Takehisa fired the gun. Hikaru flinched. 

The explosion came, but he didn't see it too. He felt himself being flung aside and he hit the floor hard, rolling around and around like a dice out of control. The broken hourglass crunched under his spine. When he finally stopped, at Ikuhara's feet, he could only lay there for a moment, panting and cursing as loudly as he could, then he wiped his eyes again and staggered upright to peer at Takehisa. Ikuhara stood beside him and handed him another piece of cloth. 

"Told you to wear your glasses," said Ikuhara.

"Will you be quiet," said Hikaru. He held the cloth up to his right eye, which was bleeding more than the left. 

Takehisa stood in the same place, still with the wide-eyed stare, still with the clasped hands. But the gun was gone. 

Hikaru's neck prickled and he looked over his shoulder. Through his blood-shot gaze, green eyes, bright like emeralds, yet glittering with a cold dead light, stared back at him. 

Then they were gone. 

"Amaru!" Hikaru yelled. "Wait!" 

Takehisa shrieked hoarsely as long fingers coiled around his neck and flung him to a nearby wall. Amaru stalked towards him. The sun shone bright on his dark hair. 

"Where did you get it?" he said in a smooth, modulated voice, but there was murderous intent behind his words. He grabbed Takehisa's neck again. His victim twisted and squirmed, trying to look at his tormentor. Amaru let go for a brief moment, his lips curling into a terrible smile, and sunlight seemed to explode into the room, hot and angry, like branding iron liquefied. "Where. Did. You. Get. It?" 

Takehisa screamed and screamed. 

Blindly, Hikaru lunged forward to grab him, but Ikuhara had taken hold of his arm and was dragging him out of the door. He struggled; Ikuhara only tightened his grasp. 

He heard Aludia say, disinterestedly: "They would travel for leagues and leagues to the precise and remote spot indicated by auspicious signs, and there the massacre would occur. There was a famous strangler -- Buhram of Allahabad -- who in forty years on the job killed more than nine hundred people." 

Hikaru let out a long, resigned sigh. Ikuhara ushered him out onto the hallway. The door shut behind them. 

---------------------------------------

They stepped out on the empty sidewalk at the precise instant that the Chief Inspector's carriage pulled up in front of them. Hikaru turned round rapidly, covering his eyes, while Ikuhara took a step back and waved the swirling dust and grit away patiently. The Chief hopped onto the street amidst the confusion like an overweight primordial fairy. His carriage teetered behind him, harnessed to a team of horses that always seemed to be frothing at the mouth, their eyes glazed, hooves thumping unsteadily as if ready to buckle and collapse on the street, every single time Ikuhara saw them since he could no longer remember. The two junior bureaucrats who accompanied the Chief wherever he went and who now jumped down after him looked on the verge of fainting, too. Ikuhara was about to make a comment about labor legislation, but the Chief glared at him, brows lowered, posture menacing to the extreme. His aides avoided Ikuhara's eyes, as if by doing so they could pretend they were not visible to anyone. As well they might.

"What the hell is going on now?" he demanded. "You're damn lucky the messenger found me in my office. If I had just read your note, I would have burned it on the spot. Well?" he barked. "What is it?" 

Ikuhara knew that he knew but he answered dutifully anyway, "We think we found the suspect, sir, but he wouldn't admit to anything when we talked to him, so Inspector Hikaru and I decided to take him to, well..." 

"You were the one who insisted," snapped Hikaru, looking over his shoulder. "Don't drag me into this. I was all for bringing him to the Inspectorate." 

"But you were the one who asked Amaru for help in the first place," Ikuhara pointed out. 

The Chief stared at Hikaru. His aides blinked. "And what happened to _you_?" 

Hikaru shrugged. He seemed to have regained his vision somewhat. His eyes, while still mottled with blood, looked straight at the Chief. "The suspect," he said curtly. "I think. He's certainly powerful enough, if the things he did were any to go by." 

Ikuhara gave him a meaningful look. 

"Don't say it, Ikuhara," said Hikaru. 

"And where's your suspect now?" the Chief asked though he knew the answer to that, too. 

Ikuhara gestured at the house behind him. 

The Chief looked ready to tear his hair out. "Why did you leave him in there, you fools? Didn't I tell you to--"

"Don't worry," said Ikuhara. "He'll live. I hope."

"It's not that, idiot!" the Chief shouted. 

The door, which Ikuhara had left open, flew clear off its hinges and landed on the street with a loud crash. Amaru stepped out. He was dragging something along with him. Something that moved, and moaned.

Hikaru dabbed at his eyes again. The Chief stared. 

Amaru didn't look surprised at the sight of the Inspectors. He didn't even seem to notice them. He dropped his burden unceremoniously on the ground. It took Ikuhara a moment to recognize Takehisa. 

"Well?" said Amaru. Ikuhara knew he was not talking to him, or to Hikaru, or to the Chief.

The man on the ground looked up. Ikuhara peered down at him then drew back. He exchanged silent glances with Hikaru and the Chief, who nodded curtly. 

"I'll tell you everything," Takehisa whispered, blood dripping from the side of his mouth. He was smiling up at Amaru adoringly. "I'll tell you."

---------------------------------------

The aides, looking even paler and more shaken than their charge, drove back to the Inspectorate, where they would take Takehisa's statement and charge him formally. Amaru had disappeared while the Chief gave his orders without so much as a by-your-leave, but then that was already to be expected.

"That's it," the Chief muttered and strode into the house, up the narrow winding stairs, and into the drawing room, followed closely by a distracted-looking Ikuhara and a wary Hikaru.

They found Amaru lounging on the divan where Takehisa had sat, reading a book. The sun was no longer so bright; the Chief could discern the outlines of the stained decorations on the windows. A pentagram, a prayer wheel, a particularly malicious and abstruse series of spells, the ingredient for a poison injected through the thorn of a rose. 

Aludia was still painting. The only part of her body he could see was her thin white hands, weaving back and forth. 

The Chief flung himself on Hikaru's chair and glared at them both. "Look, Amaru," he spat. 

"Sumeragi," said Amaru coldly. 

"You have never deserved that name less," retorted the Chief in disgust. "What the hell were you trying to pull, killing that boy?" 

"Hikaru said he was thirty," answered Aludia, putting down her palette on the table beside her and adjusting the canvas. 

"I don't care how old he was!" yelled the Chief. "You had no business murdering him!" 

"He is not dead," said Amaru without looking away from his book. 

"Quiet!" The Chief realized he was nearly out of his chair, his veins were popping out of his neck, and that he was breathing far too heavily. Ikuhara and Hara kept glancing at him. He loosened his grip on the arms of his chair and slowly sat back, mentally reciting a poem to himself to regain control, if not composure. 

"The distinction is irrelevant," he finally said after about ten minutes, when he thought he could speak normally. "Amaru, you will look at me. Or I will have you arrested and shipped off to nurse baby frogs in the South. And should you try to use your twisted magic there, you would automatically transform into a man-eating snake-headed goblin. Would that make you happy, Amaru-kun? SUMERAGI?" 

From the way Amaru was staring at him now, green eyes brilliant with solid and hateful menace, obviously not. 

The Chief braced himself for the return volley. He didn't really think Amaru would attack him. Perhaps incinerate his hair, but not dismember him completely or anything like that. Still, the Chief sat a little straighter; out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hikaru and Ikuhara reach into their robes for their ofuda. Just let Amaru try to jerk his --

"You're right," said Amaru calmly.

Ikuhara coughed.

What did the damn kid expect him to do with all this excess adrenaline? Maybe he was hoping to burn a hole in his veins.

Aludia sighed. Her breath stirred her veil. 

"What?" said the Chief.

Amaru sat up on the divan, swinging his legs down to the floor, which he didn't quite reach. One bare foot dangled as he smiled. The Chief wondered what he was up to. Interrogating Amaru and Aludia, the Chief realized, had ruined him for every other blood sport. 

"I shouldn't have been too hard on Takehisa-san," said Amaru.

The Chief glowered at him.

"It would have been kinder," another narrow smile, "to have shot him with the gun your department so thoughtfully supplied us, instead of--? What did I do again, Aludia?"

"Burned him, I think," said Aludia. "His crotch. And you broke most of his bones." 

The Chief shot up from his chair despite himself. "The hell you did!" 

"You didn't notice?" asked Aludia calmly. She picked up her brush. 

Ikuhara coughed again. Hikaru rolled his eyes. 

The smile had gone very cold. "Just in case you have forgotten, he killed a hundred people. More, if you would check his statement after your clerks are through with him. And he stole from a _dead man_. Not just a dead man, but the son of the court onmyouji." 

"We're not sure he killed the boy," interjected Hikaru. 

"No, of course, not," said Aludia. "But he found his body." 

"What did he take?" demanded the Chief. 

"I'll give it to you eventually," answered Amaru. "Hikaru and Ikuhara have already talked to us about this." 

The Chief closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. Ikuhara gave him a slightly apologetic shrug, while Hikaru glared stoically ahead of him. 

"All right," the Chief answered wearily. "You win. Just as long as you do not add Human Sacrifice to your list of misdemeanors." 

He heard Aludia laugh. Amaru's mouth twisted.

Hikaru gave him a look that said: With all due respect, sir, that disclaimer no longer applies. It never has for a long, long time. 

He heaved himself up from his chair. It would be dusk soon, though the light was still strong. Afternoons were longer during summer. "We're going," he said curtly. 

"So soon?" said Aludia. "Won't you have tea first?" 

"Um--" 

"No, Ikuhara," said Hikaru, glaring at him. 

Ikuhara raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. 

The Chief looked around him for a moment, noting that Amaru, probably during that interval when he was barking orders at his frightened aides, had already cleared a table and had laid out the chess pieces. So it was to be chess tonight. 

"You'll hear from me soon," he said. 

Aludia inclined her head. Then she glanced at Amaru, who shrugged and lay back down on the divan. The room darkened abruptly, as if curtains had been pulled together, though there were none. The windows remained unshuttered. As he left the room, the Chief glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Aludia was removing her veil. He paused to watch. Ikuhara nearly bumped into his back, and muttered an apology, but Hikaru, too, was staring. 

She smiled at them through her white, white face, her narrow eyes that stared and glowed like a predator seeing in the dark, blacker than her eyes, but her hair was blackest yet, it fell to her knees, and it was as if she hadn't removed her veil after all. 

"By the way, Inspector Hikaru," she said, "wouldn't you like to see my painting? I knew you wanted to look but I wasn't finished and I was too preoccupied talking to Takehisa-san." 

Slowly, she turned the canvas.

"I was thinking about Yuki-onna. The Snow Queen," she said, smiling. Her teeth, too, were very white, as white as incongruous snow, whiter than her skin. "But somehow I found myself painting the Holy Virgin. What do you think?"

---------------------------------------

"Are you sure they're not vampires?" said Ikuhara later as they rode a hired carriage back to the Inspectorate. It had taken them half an hour to find one. No one lived in the street where Amaru and Aludia did. "Because I was reading this text and I could have sworn I saw a copy of it in Amaru's library--" 

Hikaru snorted. "No. Not vampires. Worse. They're _mad_." 

The Chief was quiet. He had not spoken since they left the house. 

"Well, Chief?" Ikuhara nudged him. "You don't think they've started to transfigure themselves into weird foreign monsters, do you?"

"No," he finally said in a tired voice. It had been a long day. "They're just children, Ikuhara." 

"Children?" said Ikuhara blankly. 

"You're joking, right? Aren't you, Chief? It was a joke?" said Hikaru after a protracted silence. Ikuhara was choking. Hikaru gave him a distracted thwack on the head. 

But what else were they? 

Whatever it was, they had already decided, and there was really nothing he could do. The Chief crossed his arms and stared out of the window. The carriage rocked and swayed as the horses stumbled on something in the street. Perhaps a dead man, thought the Chief. The suddenly rising moon careened crazily in his vision. He remembered Aludia's painting: the Virgin, as she called her, with eyes of glass-encrusted orbs, like a violated doll, or a shattered hourglass, clasping a young boy's body to her breast, holding his heart. Crying his blood. 

Children, he thought again. 

End Prologue

Note: The 'story' Aludia was telling is based on the book "The Confessions of a Thug," by Meadows Taylor (1839). Sick sick girl. 


	2. Part 1

**Death of a Necromancer**

Draft: April 4, 2003  


Note: While this story does not seem like fanfic -- because it's so wildly, dubiously AU -- it _is_ fanfic, inasmuch as it is based on Tokyo Babylon, and in the writing of it. None of the original CLAMP characters appear though, except by allusion. 

I fooled around with a lot of things that otherwise should not be treated so frivolously. _ My only excuse is repulsive self-indulgence _and_ laziness. So you know. 

Chapter 1. 

The Consort would never have come. She had always been punctilious to a fault, and teahouses, no matter how fashionable, were simply too scandalous for one of her exalted station. But by now she was a very desperate woman, and she would have agreed to a meeting in a stable yard if it had come to that. The attack on the life of the Heir Apparent had failed. He had not endured more than a sick stomach, but the son of Michizane had died nonetheless. Coming so soon after Her Majesty's shocking disgrace, what should merely be regarded as another trifling assasination attempt would now seem to have become a very uncomfortable coincidence. 

But still... a teahouse? If only the Heir Apparent _had_ died, she sighed to herself, she would not have been reduced to this!

"I perceive that you are not comfortable with our surroundings, my lady," said the man she had come to meet. His presence only made her feel more embarrassed but, really, what could one do about it? She could not see him, except for the outlines of his body as thrown into relief by the small lamps lit within by votive candles tastefully scattered about the room. He was sitting behind a standing curtain she had insisted should be placed between them. They were all alone. She had not dared take more than two of her most trusted women with her, and both of these were waiting in the carriage. The man, for all she knew, had come by himself, but he had only entered the room when she had already been seated. At least _he_ seemed circumspect. His voice was very urbane and not a little sympathetic. She was not really surprised at the obvious sophistication, having heard of his reputation, but she had not imagined that people like him would have even better diction than the well-born third-rank officials who served in court. She allowed herself to relax a little. If she tried, she could pretend that she was in her quarters in the palace, and that this conversation was nothing more than an idle flippancy over tea. The Book of Ceremonies had an entire section devoted to murder, but never in a teahouse. 

It was really too improper.

"This is not a place I would expect to find myself, no," the Consort finally replied. 

"My lady need not fear," the other said smoothly. "We are ensured of complete security and privacy here, as we would never be in the palace. I do not care for my own humble self, but my lady should know that there are people even in her intimate service who, regretfully, would not be averse to--" a delicate, ironic pause -- "listen in on teatime conversations." 

The Consort flushed. Why, he had read her very mind. Teatime conversations, indeed! What they say about him _must_ be true.

"I regret that I must speak with such vulgar frankness," he continued. "However, I hope my lady appreciates the situation." 

"Certainly I do," she answered with some asperity. "I would not be here otherwise." 

"My lady is to be commended for her presence of mind," said the man, unstintingly and ruthlessly correct to a fault. She began to be ashamed of her ungraciousness. And then, as if to perversely disclaim this polite fiction, he said, "My lady, I deduce, is tired. Would she like to have tea?" 

She wished then that she could see his face. She could predict the exigencies of ritual, and the programmatic locutions of court language were instinctive to her, but she had never had the ability to grasp the nuances of nuance. 

"No, no tea," the Consort burst out. "Come, we are wasting our time--" 

"The tea served in this teahouse is a very special and secret blend," the man said. His seemingly imperturbable voice sounded almost dreamy, which disconcerted the Consort even further. "It was made by the beautiful and accomplished Yoshino... Yoshino, of course, was one of the great seven tayu courtesans in the old Shimabara quarter. It is said that she was the lover of Miyamoto Musashi himself. That detail is almost certainly apocryphal, but delightful nonetheless. One winter night, or so the story goes... But my lady knows this already."

"We do not listen to such tales in the palace," the Consort said stiffly. 

"A pity." 

The Consort twisted her fan between her fingers. "But you may continue, if it... if it so disobliges you otherwise." 

"My lady flatters me." 

"One winter night," she said, nervously.

This time, she _knew_ he was smiling. ". . . One winter night, Yoshino was hosting a supper party for Miyamoto Musashi and his friends when he slipped quietly out of the room. She was the only one to notice him leave. He returned a few moments later. But there was a splash of red on the hem of his robes."

"'What is that?' one of his friends asked." 

"'Just a peony petal,' said Yoshino. 'Isn't it beautiful?'" 

"When the party came to an end, she suggested lightly that he had better stay with her. With her unerring instinct she had guessed that he had been engaged in a duel to the death in the few minutes he had been away. The retainers of the two men whom he had killed, several dozen of them, were waiting outside to ambush him and exact revenge."

"Sitting in her chamber he was silent, tense in anticipation of the hopeless battle that lay ahead. Suddenly Yoshino picked up her biwa, a priceless lute, took a knife, and smashed the curved sound box to pieces. From the ruined instrument she picked out the crosspiece, a single piece of wood, and showed it to him."

"This, she explained, was the heart of the instrument; all the sound came from this. If the crosspiece were as taut and unyielding as he was at the moment, a single stroke of the plectrum would break it. But if he could be as flexible and responsive as it was, no one could defeat him. Inspired by her words, he went out into the snow and, with a few nonchalant slashes of his sword, decimated the dozens of men gathered outside. For the rest of his days, he never forgot her or her advice." 

The man was silent for a while. She imagined him lifting a bowl of tea to his mouth, sipping it delicately.

"Is that -- is that it?" She tried to keep her voice steady but she stammered nonetheless. She knew she was behaving outrageously, but dread was beginning to overcome all fussiness. Oh, how did he _know_? 

"There is more. But I am boring my lady with these tiresome little stories," said the man sedately. "I believe she has come here with a far more important purpose in mind." 

Surely, the Consort considered a bit hysterically, surely once was enough? One murder attempt in itself was justifiably chic, but two in a row seemed terribly unbecoming. 

"If I were to be found out after this," she said, agonized, "the Emperor would never forgive me. He has always so admired my impeccable etiquette."

"With good reason," the man commiserated. "But if Yoshino, a mere courtesan, could exhibit such magnificent deportment over an ugly little drop of blood -- a peony petal, indeed! -- what more my lady, a noblewoman of the highest rank, when she would not even see the tiniest pinprick?" 

"Is that true?" she queried in a hopeful voice. 

"I shall do my best," answered the other. "But, ultimately, it will be to your deciding, of course, my lady." 

The Consort took a deep breath. Then she slid a slim aloeswood box from around the curtain. She caught a glimpse of thin white fingers as they took hold of the box, and pulled it to the other side of the curtain. 

There was a pause, filled only by the oddly pretty, tinkling sound of metal against metal. She waited with bated breath. Then he said, "My lady, with all due respect, this will pay for perhaps one minor Intimate or two officials below the sixth rank. But a Prince..." The voice was still polite, but she sensed contempt for the first time below the surface, and impatience.

She was mortified herself and she dropped her fan in her confusion. "Forgive me. I am quite unversed in these matters. My steward informed me I needed only to pay a deposit... you will get the rest after it is done. Is that not how something like this operates?" she said, plaintively. 

The man sighed. "In that case, I require a larger deposit, madame." 

It was a good thing she was always prepared. This minor self-compliment mollified her a little. She pushed another box around the screen.

The man was silent. Then he sighed again. "The young ones, you understand, are more difficult. I prefer to deal with them while they sleep. If it is done correctly, they proceed directly from sleep into death. There are not many who possess this skill; I consider it to be a unique expression of my artistry. I offer you this service, but it entails extra expense..." 

"How much for this... service?" 

"For another twenty thosand ryo, I will send him peacefully into the Nine Realms, as gently as a petal falling. Your own sleep will be unslumbered. Understand, please, my lady, that I normally do not care to offer this option, but I thought you might be considering the necessary proprieties. The Heir Apparent is not just any ordinary boy." 

Oh dear, she thought, she _had_ a lot to learn. Perhaps that was why the first attempt had failed. Foolish of her to think she could just kill the Heir Apparent like an inconsequential palace servant! This at least she could understand. There were rituals, after all, and there were rituals.

He was speaking with more enthusiasm. "I can, of course, treat him as an adult. With adults, it is another art form entirely, one that I enjoy well, but for a different reason. It would be wasteful to deny some of my subjects the opportunity to contemplate the face of death; I must admit there is a bit of a thespian in me." She heard him laugh, quietly, as if at a private joke. "There are so many ways to portray death." 

She thought he could see her then, through the figured silk hangings. Maybe he was deciding which sort of death he would design for her. Habit, she supposed. She suddenly felt naked in his presence, sensing his familiarity, like a physician's, with the human anatomy, even cast in shadow. 

"Very well," the Consort said hastily. "You will receive the money by courier early tomorrow morning." 

"My lady is so kind," he replied. She heard him close the boxes. "So kind." 

Her throat felt dry. She fought the urge to swallow. "And now," she said, trying to speak in her old grand manner, "perhaps I might have a taste of that tea you were speaking of. I normally don't drink tea brewed by ordinary courtesans, but after this, I feel entitled to a restorative." 

"But of course, madame."

"And you will tell me another story," she said after a moment's hesitation. 

"If my lady so wishes," he said. The Consort thought she heard him laugh again but decided he wouldn't be so rude. "Another story." 

Lord Hajime Saemon entered the Club Seimei at exactly ten o'clock in the morning. The doorman, old Sosuke, who had been doorman for as far back as he could remember, seemed shocked to see him. He was sitting in the veranda adjoining the teahouse which overlooked the Kamo-gawa, enjoying a breakfast of rice gruel and fruit, when Hajime announced himself. 

"Don't stare so, Sosuke. You won't deny me entry this time will you?" Hajime said, grinning. "As you can see, I actually bathed. _And_ changed my clothes." 

Sosuke recovered himself and gave Hajime a repressive frown. "That is the first truly rude thing you have ever said to me, Hajime-sama. And believe me, I've heard a lot of outrageous babble from you, especially when you're in your cups." 

Hajime's grin widened. "I apologize. Is Seimei awake already?"

Sosuke shook his head. "We were all up until five in the morning. A party of young gentlemen stayed for a game of chess and were rather raucous for a good part of it. We had to put them up for the night. No doubt they won't be ready to come down until late afternoon, if at all." He looked disgusted.

He raised an eyebrow. "They didn't break anything, did they? These punks can no more control their chess pieces than their own shikigami. It's disgraceful. You should have thrown them out." 

"The wards held," said Sosuke in a dry voice. "And Master Hajime is in no position to speak so, as he had been a -- how did he put it? -- young punk himself not so long ago. I distinctly recall your father Lord Saemon disowning you for a time after you nearly burned the entire quarter down. Was it Shachmat?" 

"No. An entirely unwarranted Alea. Even back then, Manago was prone to hysterical endgames. Now _you_ are teasing me, Sosuke." Hajime peered at him. "You should be resting yourself. You look exhausted. No, wait, that was another rude thing to say." He laughed at Sosuke's indignant expression. 

"Be off with you," muttered Sosuke and sat back down. "I'll send Mitsu with your tea." He picked up a broadsheet and retreated behind it, yawning. 

"Oh," he said casually just as Hajime was about to step into the bridgeway leading to the teahouse interior, "Amaru-sama is waiting for you."

Hajime whipped around. "He's here already?" he demanded, looking at once rueful and resigned. "Damn. And here I was, thinking I was early for once."

"Don't worry, Hajime-sama," said Sosuke, smiling rather maliciously. "Sumeragi will not think any less of you because of it." 

"One day, you might just feel what it is to be at the receiving end of my Schachmat, Sosuke," called out Hajime over his shoulder. "You old punk." 

Sosuke chuckled. 

He spotted Amaru immediately, seated at a table near the open sliding panels leading out to the inner garden. There was no one else around, which would explain the unwonted visibility, beside the fact that it was far too early in the morning. Amaru usually met him in a small private parlor located at the back of the teahouse which Seimei maintained for him. No one else was allowed to use it, except for Amaru, who exercised this privilege at the most ungodly hours and with absolutely no due consideration. This monomaniac thoughtlessness would in the scheme of things seem to be nothing more than a charming and whimsical eccentricity, if it were anybody else but Amaru (and Aludia, Hajime qualified). But Seimei was one of those very rare people who still believed in sparing Amaru's non-existent tender sensibilities. He really did think Amaru refused to be seen in the public rooms because of the inevitable censure he would be subjected to should he do so. Hajime had tried to disprove this touching but exceedingly misplaced psychoanalysis once, and had resolved never to try it again.

"But he's just a child, Hajime-san!" exclaimed Seimei, looking shocked, not to mention scandalized. "To say such things!" he added reprovingly. 

Seimei was one of the most cunning and intelligent people Hajime knew -- he would have to be, to inherit something like _this_ teahouse and to run it as he did -- but he had his blind spots like the next person and Amaru, unfortunately, was one of them. Hajime could never quite figure out how and when that happened. 

Amaru was fiddling with his tea cup absently as Hajime approached, but the green eyes he turned to him were anything but distracted. "You're late," he said in his coldest voice. 

Hajime rolled his eyes. He pulled back a chair and sat on it, dropping the cloth satchel he was holding on the polished glass floor. "Give me a break, kid. It's not even dinner time yet." 

"You were the one who wanted to meet with me," said Amaru. "I have other things to do so don't waste my time. What is it?" 

"Not even a good morning, Amaru-kun?" Hajime chided. "No? I thought not." He sighed and took a seat, extracting a tin of cigarettes from inside his tailored morning coat. "Your manners are execrable. Who could have brought you up to be such an embarrassment?" 

Amaru glared. 

"Don't answer that either," said Hajime with revolting cheerfulness. He lit a cigarette and smoked contentedly for a while, ignoring Amaru's narrowed eyes upon him. "God, this feels good. Couldn't even get a decent stick in the palace. Damn those priggish stewards and their loathsome snuff boxes."

"So that's where you were," said Amaru.

"Where else?" Hajime exhaled smoke into the high-domed ceiling where a battered old fan whirred desultorily. One of its spokes was spattered with blood, expressed in the figurations of a heart. "You know what happened."

"How is Lord Michizane?" Amaru asked without much interest.

Hajime took another drag from his cigarette, short and hard and bitter, and then ground it slowly on a small copper tray. "What do you think? His son died. Murdered, in all probability." 

Amaru put his tea cup down on the table. "Have they found who did it?"

"No, but give them time." Hajime's mouth twisted into a thin narrow smile. "The entire affair was something of a disgrace, actually. They even found the Heir Apparent's purported suicide note." He snorted. "Imagine, a suicide note. Sewn on his death robes yet."

An expression of distaste flickered across Amaru's pale face. "Not, of course, that the death robes are black," he said caustically.

"But what else?" said Hajime, goading him. 

"I'm sure you would like to tell me vulgar fables all day long, Saemon," said Amaru coolly. "I am not interested. If you've got nothing intelligent to say to me, get out." 

Hajime raised an eyebrow at him and lit another cigarette. "I should rinse your mouth with purified salt, Sumeragi," he said. "Not interested? From what the Chief told me last night, I rather thought you would be more than interested. And what's this about incinerating a suspect's private parts? The Chief looked like he was about to cry. It was very frightening, on top of it all. Do think of your elders' sensibilities once in a while, Amaru-kun."

Amaru pushed his chair back. 

Hajime sighed. "Fine. We'll do it your way." He bent down to pick the satchel, and smoke from his cigarette raised a glimmer of fog on the glass floor. He placed the satchel on the table. "Well?" he said, indicating it with his cigarette. "Aren't you going to look at it?" 

Amaru studied him for a rather long nerve-racking moment and then sat back down again. He untied the knots keeping the satchel closed -- without any effort at all, Hajime noted with some cynical amusement -- and withdrew a thick wooden box which he opened without even once bothering to pause at the lock. 

"You found them," he said, finally. 

"Yes," said Hajime, watching the Sumeragi's face closely. "Did you have any doubt?"

"What a stupid question," replied Amaru. Impatiently, Hajime thought, and was somewhat gratified. 

"What do you want with them?"

Amaru shrugged. "Research." 

"Research," Hajime repeated. 

He had seen them before -- he had _found_ them, after all -- but he was beginning to think he should not have given them to Amaru at the first opportunity, especially considering the situation now. If he had more time, he would have had them checked properly first, but Amaru would inevitably find out and would get them for himself through means that did not bear thinking about. And they were the only reason he could think of to get Amaru to see him. Not that he would actually learn anything from this interview, no. Amaru spoke a sort of third-degree language that, when it wasn't turned against one, transposed itself into a perpetual statement to mind one's own business. And now this business involved Babylonian demon bowls, all thanks to him, Hajime reflected grimly. But, as the Chief put it, _what else could we do?_

They needed Amaru's help -- cooperation was of course impossible -- and the best way to get it was to give him everything he wanted. At least, the Chief consoled him, though he sounded like he was talking to himself, he could not possibly use those old useless bowls to sacrifice anybody. Hajime's mouth twisted at the recollection. The Chief really was too morbid sometimes. 

The demon bowls, as they were called, were fired earthenware vessels, originally excavated in situ in Persia, dating, Hajime surmised, from the sixth to the eighth century. There was nothing extraordinary about their craftsmanship, except for the elaborate inscriptions, in Syriac, Aramaic, and Mandaic, written in spiral form beginning from the rim to the center of the bowl. He could read Aramaic with some facility, but as far as he could see, the texts had nothing to do at all with the bowl, though they declaimed the usual motifs -- common divine names, familiar voces magicae, the ouroboros, the characteres... 

"They are protective devices," said Amaru, looking bored. 

"They better be," said Hajime with a great deal of skepticism. "I have never known you to be the least bit interested in defensive magic."

Amaru closed the box and placed it back inside the bag. "Aludia might be."

"Is that true," said Hajime, straightening in his chair. 

"She wanted to know if you have found her recipe book," Amaru said. 

Hajime sighed again. "Tell her to forget it."

"All right," said Amaru. He stood up. "There are other people she probably knows."

Hajime closed his eyes briefly. "On second thought, tell her I just need a little more time. If she will be so kind as to wait and not do anything that can lead to -- dangerous things." 

"You are being repetitive."

"The Chief observed the same thing about himself, too. Dear me, I must be getting old," Hajime answered wryly. "I gather Ikuhara was suitably tickled." 

"I'm going," said Amaru. 

"Amaru," said Hajime. For once, he dropped his wary, casual manner, and he looked at Amaru with something approaching warning in his eyes. "When will you and Aludia stop playing these games?" 

Amaru's bright green eyes flickered. Hajime didn't flinch. "What games?"

"Not of the teahouse variety. You know what I am talking about," he said. "Everything else is becoming circumstantial to whatever madness you two are intent on perpetrating. One day, one of you might get hurt." He knew this last was ridiculous as soon as the words left his mouth, but he himself was a victim of undesirable fatalisms. 

"Spare me your pretty conceits," said Amaru, mockingly. "One day, one of us will _die_, Saemon." 

Hajime kept his face carefully blank but he knew Amaru had seen him flinch. Sadist, he thought furiously. Goddamn unscrupulous brat. 

Amaru smirked at him. 

He passed a startled Mitsu on the threshold, who immediately flattened himself against the wall, trying not to spill his tea tray. 

"Give my regards to Aludia," Hajime called out after a pause. Amaru didn't even look back.

Mitsu looked Hajime over carefully, then retreated from of the room without a word. 

Hajime didn't even notice. Somewhat angry, and very, very exasperated, which was his usual state of mind after a 'conversation' with Amaru, he lit his third -- fourth? fifth? tenth? he no longer noticed -- cigarette of the day. The floor was littered with ash. Seimei would raise a fuss. At least he wasn't drunk yet, otherwise he might just punch a hole through the beautiful glass, and what would his father say to that? 

Of course he could ask -- maybe Seimei would even let him do it for free -- but Lord Saemon was only marginally less human than Amaru, and he was already a ghost. 

Detective Inspector Ikuhara was rather inclined to arrange a rendezvous at Club Seimei that night himself, but a glance at the almanac made him prudently decide otherwise. The Mid-God must be having, at this very moment, the time of his life blocking the direction to the teahouse. Nakagami was a killjoy that way. There were other routes, but Ikuhara did not really fancy a boating expedition on the Kamo River. One never knew with gods, and plotting a directional taboo was not what one would call a precise science. Why, there was once a man who thought he was being very clever, going to his mistress' house from the northeast direction because he thought Nakagami was all happy and immovable in the southwest, but as it turned out, his wife, who knew of the affair, had replaced their almanac with an outdated one, and so instead he found himself smack in the middle of Nakagami's blockade. The rest of the story was just simply too hair-raising as it involved huge and pissed yin-yang deities, ogre-transforming husbands, and Aludia out picking sakura petals on a handbasket. 

"You're making that up," said Hikaru, looking extremely irritated. "Look, Ikuhara, just don't fucking go if you're so... No. I don't want to hear it... What? ... SHE DID NOT." 

End Chapter 1


End file.
